Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Phillips Where Has Mark Sanford Been?
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:00 AM
Someone needs to get with Mark Sanford and explain to him that Hank Snow was just singing a song, not handing out advice on how to make excuses.
(On a side note, Sanford probably should hire whatever firm was doing PR for Tallapoosa, Georgia back in the 20th century, because it's barely a town and yet managed to get in this song and be the subject of a Wallace Stevens poem. That's some genius self-promotion, right there.)
Update: Sanford was greeted last night at the Atlanta airport by a reporter, and the South Carolina governor revealed he was wrapping up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires. He hadn't really been hiking on the Appalachian Trail, as his aides have been insisting.
Comments (24)
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Well, of course, if Sanford is doing his own do-it-yourself Hank Snow song, it's a lot easier to rhyme Buenos Aires than it is to rhyme Appalachian Trail, so I have him some credit for that.
Also, I eagerly await learning when Woods is going to buy SoBeale a beer.
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Straight from twitter to Pith:
RT @Roland_Hedley Stimulus package spending out of control: Appalachian Trail extended to Argentina.
Apparently Sanford was doing a little "stimulus spending" on the Little Governor.
Hate to say we told ya so, but...we told ya so! Impromptu walk in the woods my ass.
CNN: "S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford -- after days when his whereabouts were unknown -- says he has been unfaithful to his wife."
Looks like our intrepid reporter Jeff Woods does have a broken BS meter after all.
In defense of Brother Woods, he's just an old-fashioned, straight-up married guy, so affairs are way outside his normal mode of thinking. Now you other guys who automatically jumped to that conclusion... hmmm... I gotta wonder.
Woods is probably just not old enough. The magic age seems to be about 50, give or take a few years. I wonder if Corker and Alexander will stand by this guy too.
Pete, I think it's just that men aren't as mysterious to women as y'all are to each other. A man leaves his wife for a week without telling her exactly where he's going for very few reasons--drunken bender, blinding grief over the loss of a loved one, affair, and only very rarely loss of one's damn fool mind.
The fact that Mrs. Sanford wasn't worried or distraught left only one real option.
He may be old-fashioned, straight-up,and married, but he is a smart-ass and a lousy reporter to boot.
I may be a lousy reporter but I'm not a smartass. I go hiking a lot and I don't usually tell my wife where I'm going. So it didn't seem strange to me. Yeah, that's what it was. My bullshit meter was disabled, unbeknownst to me at the time. It won't happen again.
Okay, B., so I admit it: Jeff had me totally sold. I'm thinking to myself, "Yeah, a nice weekend in the woods? Away from the phones and the yes-men and my shitty governor's job? Drinking whiskey by the fire? Communing with nature? That sounds totally plausible. In fact, it sounds just like something Woods would do."
But we were wrong. Which I totally put on Jeff. A letter of stern reprimand, just like Diane Black would write, has been placed in his permanent file. If this ever happens again... well... let's just hope it never comes to that.
Oh man that press conference has "INSTANT CLASSIC" smeared all over it. I'll just place this case in the Told-You-So file in my schadenfreude cabinet.
Really though, the wife is what set it off. She played that like an underminey, passive-aggressive genius - he was going to write "something" away from the kids? On Father's Day weekend? And she had no idea where she was? The wives of journalists are probably used to such things, but that was an open-and-shut case of the wife of a politican (huge difference) fed the fuck up and choosing to subtly sell her cheating husband out.
Atlanta, Appalachia, Argentina. E-mails (find them plz). Naked hiking. Stimulus money. Family values. IT'S ALL SO GOOD I WANT TO EAT IT.
Woods love of hiking disabled his bullshit meter and all he detected from the criticism of Sanford's odd behavior was an outrageous assault on hiking. You're a hero in my book, Woods!
I hope Sanford and his lady friend got in a good hike in Argentina before the shit hit the fan (though I doubt it was very cool there, like it would be up in Vermont or New Hampshire). After all, isn't that what's most important?
On a side note, I would pay one million dollars to be a fly on the wall if Pete and Jeff went camping and hiking in the woods together.
Okay, I guess a fly on a nearby tree. But it would still be awesome.
